What Physicians Pay for Disability Insurance in 2026

The physicians who ask us for a quote have usually been told a premium is "about 1 to 3 percent of income" and nothing more specific, because the carriers do not publish rates, and until this study we had not printed ours either. In 2026 our team generated carrier illustrations across the physician occupation classes at Guardian, Principal, MassMutual, The Standard, and Ameritas, holding the configuration constant and varying age, benefit amount, sex, and state one factor at a time. This page prices a physician policy from that study, by specialty group, for a male and a female applicant.

Read every number here as an illustrated rate on a hypothetical healthy applicant, because that is what it is. The carriers ran these illustrations in August 2026 on a standard-rate file before underwriting, and underwriting is where a physician's number moves, since about 26 percent of the physician policies we place come out of it with an exclusion or a rating (2026 book audit).

How much does disability insurance cost for a physician?

In Seaworthy's 2026 quote study, a 35-year-old male physician buying $10,000 a month of coverage pays $345 to $573 a month across the five major carriers, or $3,974 to $6,674 a year when paid annually, and a 35-year-old female physician pays $527 to $919 a month for the same policy, since all five carriers priced the two sexes differently at the study baseline. Those figures buy the whole policy, meaning a true own-occupation definition that pays if you can no longer practice your specialty even while you earn a living some other way, benefits to age 65 after a 90-day elimination period, and every optional rider the carrier offers, the cost of living adjustment (COLA), residual disability, catastrophic, and benefit increase riders included. The bottom of each range is an internal medicine, family medicine, or hospitalist class and the top is a general surgery class, because the carrier prices on the occupation class it assigns your specialty.

Within a specialty group the five carriers are closer than the physicians we quote tend to expect at the internal medicine tier and far apart at the surgical tier. A male internist's fully loaded quote runs $345 to $374, an 8 to 9 percent spread from cheapest to most expensive, while a male surgeon's runs $418 to $573, a 37 percent spread, or $1,897 a year on the annual premium for identical coverage. On the female profile the spreads are 15 and 41 percent. Dropping the COLA rider removes 9 to 16 percent at these classes, which takes the male internist to $290 to $331 and the male surgeon to $351 to $506, and the female figures to $447 to $521 and $539 to $790.

Measured monthly premium ranges across the five major carriers we place, 2026 quote study, sticker price before any discount. Internal medicine uses each carrier's class for internal medicine, family medicine, and hospitalists, and surgical uses each carrier's class for general surgeons. The COLA rows remove the COLA premium itemized on each illustration. Discounts are covered in their own section below.

How much more women physicians pay

A female physician pays 39 to 76 percent more than a male physician for identical coverage at the same carrier, measured at the study baseline across the physician classes on this page, and 43 to 76 percent more on the internal medicine and surgical classes in the table, which is why every range above is quoted twice. A female internist pays $527 to $606 a month where a male internist pays $345 to $374, and a female surgeon pays $653 to $919 against $418 to $573. The gap varies by carrier by more than thirty points, so a woman physician has more riding on which carrier gets quoted than a man does, and 43 percent of the physicians in our placed book were women in the 2026 audit. Some multi-life and employer-sponsored arrangements price the two sexes on one rate table, which erases the difference outright, so a woman physician with access to a group case at her hospital or practice should have it quoted beside the individual rates.

Does your specialty change the price?

Yes, and by more than any rider decision. In our quotes at age 35 and $10,000 a month, male profile, internal medicine, family medicine, and hospitalist classes cost $345 to $374 a month across the five carriers, psychiatry cost $405 to $471, general surgery cost $418 to $573, and anesthesiology and emergency medicine cost $494 to $573 on a mixed basis explained in the study notes, since two of those five quotes carry the mental and nervous limitation the carrier requires for those specialties and three are class rates run without it. For a woman the same groups run $527 to $606, $587 to $744, $653 to $919, and $749 to $919, the last on the same mixed basis. At the same carrier, general surgery ran 20 to 53 percent above internal medicine, psychiatry 15 to 26 percent above it, and anesthesiology or emergency medicine 41 to 61 percent above it, on the male profile. The carrier prices on the occupation class it assigns your specialty, and the assignments diverge enough that the cheapest carrier for an internist is routinely a middle-of-the-pack carrier for a surgeon. Which class each carrier assigns to which specialty is on our physician occupation class grid, and the surgical specialties are compared on our page on what surgeons pay.

The order of the five carriers reshuffles between groups. The carrier at the bottom of the internal medicine range is not the carrier at the bottom of the surgical range. A physician who takes the first quote offered never learns which treatment their specialty got, which is the practical reason we run all five for every physician. The rest of the physician picture, from specialty own-occupation language to which carriers recognize a subspecialty, lives on our physician disability insurance hub, and the carrier rankings for physicians explain why the cheapest illustration is not always the strongest contract.

What does each extra $1,000 of monthly benefit cost?

Between $5,000 and $15,000 a month of benefit, each additional $1,000 costs a 35-year-old male physician $33 to $56 a month, and where a physician lands in that range depends on the class more than on the carrier. Internal medicine classes price at $33 to $34 per $1,000 at all five carriers, surgical classes at $41 to $51, and anesthesiology and emergency medicine at $48 to $56, each measured between the carrier's own $5,000 and $15,000 illustrations. The study quoted the female profile at $10,000 only, and applying each carrier's female-to-male ratio to its own slope estimates a woman physician's cost at roughly $47 to $90 per extra $1,000 of monthly benefit.

The benefit levels in the study bracket what an attending income supports. A physician earning $300,000 typically qualifies for something in the neighborhood of $13,000 a month on an individual-pay basis, and the top physician classes generally issue to $30,000 a month, so $15,000 is realistic sizing for a mid-career specialist. On the male profile, fully loaded internal medicine coverage runs $172 to $211 a month at $5,000 of benefit, $345 to $374 at $10,000, and $511 to $537 at $15,000, with surgical classes at $209 to $322, $418 to $573, and $619 to $823. Sizing itself, and the issue and participation limits behind it, is covered in our guide to how much disability insurance you need.

Doubling the benefit from $5,000 to $10,000 doubled the premium exactly at two carriers and fell short of doubling at three, and the step from $10,000 to $15,000 cost less than half again at every carrier, so the price per dollar of coverage drifts down as the policy grows. The policy fee and the rider minimums are the same size on a small policy as on a large one, which is most of the reason the smallest configurations in the study carry the worst per-dollar pricing and why an attending buying a token benefit is paying the most for each dollar of it. The resident lock-in policy on the page linked below is a different instrument, priced to grow later rather than to replace income now.

Elimination period pricing on a physician policy

Stretching the elimination period from 90 days to 180 cut the annual premium 15 percent on the one carrier grid our study can measure, going out to 365 days cut it 30 percent, and pulling it in to 60 days added 60 percent, all on the male profile at an internal medicine class. Only one of the five carriers prints a full waiting-period grid on its illustrations, so the shape comes from that carrier's to-age-65 internal medicine configuration and from no other, and the study itself held every quote at 90 days because that is what most of the physicians we place buy.

For an employed physician the 180-day option is usually the one worth pricing, because a hospital or group practice commonly carries paid sick leave and a group long-term disability plan that begin paying at or inside that first six months, and an emergency fund covers the rest. The 60-day option costs 60 percent more to buy back a window that the attendings we place generally self-fund. Where the break-even sits for you depends on what the employer plan actually pays, when it starts, and how your carrier prices the step, since the grid above is one carrier's pricing and the others differ.

How much more does disability insurance cost if a physician waits to buy?

The same $10,000 of coverage that costs a male physician $273 to $302 a month at 28 costs $345 to $374 at 35 and $500 to $565 at 45 on the internal medicine classes, and on the surgical classes the three ages run $364 to $425, $418 to $573, and $646 to $864. At each carrier that is 15 to 35 percent more at 35 than at 28, another 45 to 58 percent more at 45 than at 35, and roughly double between 28 and 45, for a policy that then has fewer years to run. The age ladder was quoted on the male profile only, and the female profile only at the baseline, so a woman physician can apply the 39 to 76 percent range from the women's section above as a rough guide. What the same coverage costs during training, with the resident discounts applied, is on our page on what medical residents pay.

Age is the visible cost of waiting, and the medical record is the other one. The median physician in our book buys at 36, per the 2026 audit, past the point where fellowship call schedules, a back complaint, or a course of therapy have had a chance to land in the record. About 26 percent of the physician policies we place carry an exclusion or a rating, and every one of those attached at application on the basis of what the record showed that day. Between 28 and 45 an applicant hands underwriting seventeen more years of history, and the exclusion rate above is what that history produces. The full case for timing is on our page about when to buy disability insurance.

How much does the COLA rider add to a physician's premium?

COLA, the rider that raises the benefit each year during a long claim, is 9 to 18 percent of the total premium in our study depending on carrier and class, or roughly $33 to $88 a month on the male profile at $10,000 and age 35 across the four specialty groups. That makes it the largest or second-largest rider charge at four of the five carriers, and it is also the one a 35-year-old has the strongest case for, because a claim that starts in the late thirties can run three decades and a benefit fixed at $10,000 in year one buys much less by year twenty.

The residual disability rider runs 11 to 17 percent of premium on the male profile. For a proceduralist it is the rider to look at hardest, since the scenario a surgeon or interventionalist most often describes to us is losing the ability to operate while still seeing patients in clinic at a fraction of the income, and residual is the provision that pays on that fraction. Catastrophic coverage ran 4 to 12 percent, but the benefit behind that price differs by carrier, because each illustration carries the largest catastrophic benefit the carrier's software allows while keeping its no-cost benefit increase rider at the income the study assumed, which is the full $10,000 at two carriers and a scaled amount at three. The benefit increase riders themselves priced at zero dollars everywhere they appeared, which for a physician whose income climbs through the first decade of practice makes the right to buy more coverage later without new medical underwriting the cheapest line on the illustration. How those riders work is in our guide to future increase options.

California and New York pricing for physicians

California and New York both price differently from the rest of the country. On the male profile, at each carrier, the same coverage ran 12 to 29 percent above Texas in California on the internal medicine, psychiatry, and surgical classes, and 0 to 15 percent above Texas in New York. The New York figure surprises the physicians we quote, because two of the four carriers that sell the same product there price it identically to Texas and the other two add 5 to 15 percent. The California figure is net of the mental and nervous limitation discount (the 24-month cap on claims from psychiatric and substance-use conditions), which California forces onto every class at the carriers we can compare there.

The California number also hides a product change. Two of the five carriers sell a structurally different policy in California, and one of those two does the same in New York, so their quotes are left out of the state bars instead of being compared against a different contract. Mental and nervous claim limitations tighten in California at every carrier we place, so a California physician reading this page against a quote in hand is comparing two contracts that differ in more than price. At the carriers that sell the same product across states, internal medicine coverage that costs $345 to $374 a month in Texas runs $351 to $399 in New York and $394 to $467 in California, and surgical coverage moves from $418 to $573 in Texas to $480 to $573 in New York and $539 to $716 in California.

What a physician pays after discounts

Most of the physician policies we place carry an association, multi-life, or employer discount, typically 10 to 20 percent depending on carrier, and at the study's $10,000 configuration that is worth roughly $35 to $115 a month to a male physician and roughly $55 to $185 a month to a female physician, or several hundred to more than two thousand dollars a year for the life of the policy. We print the sticker prices because discount eligibility is carrier-specific and situational, and because the discount that applies to a hospital-employed hospitalist through a multi-life case is not the one that applies to a solo surgeon through a specialty association. Which discounts your file qualifies for gets confirmed at quote time, and our guide to multi-life disability insurance covers the group-sponsored version.

How does the mental and nervous limitation change the price?

Where a carrier prices the 24-month mental and nervous limitation, our male-profile quotes show it as a discount of roughly 10 to 12 percent against unlimited coverage. None of the internal medicine, psychiatry, or surgical quotes behind this page carry the limitation, because the study elected the full benefit period wherever the carrier allowed it, and those specialties get that election at every carrier we place. Anesthesiologists and emergency physicians do not get that election at any of the five carriers we place, so on a real anesthesiology or emergency medicine file the three uncapped quotes in that group would carry the limitation and its 10 to 12 percent discount, the premium sits somewhat below either anesthesiology range in the specialty chart, and the contract pays psychiatric claims for a limited period, two years at four of the five carriers we place, instead of to age 65. Which carriers require it for which specialties, and what the buy-up costs where one is offered, is in our guide to mental and nervous limitations.

How we ran the study, and what it can't tell you

The data is our team's 2026 illustration study across the five carriers we place, and the physician cut of it works like this. Every carrier quoted the same person, a 35-year-old non-smoker in Texas with $220,000 of income, for $10,000 a month with a 90-day elimination period, benefits to age 65, a true own-occupation definition, and every optional rider, with no discounts. Each carrier ran that person twice, once as a man and once as a woman, at every physician occupation class it uses, which is where the table and the women's section come from. Then the male profile alone was re-run at 28 and at 45, at $5,000 and at $15,000, and as a California and a New York issue, one change at a time. The age, benefit, and state sections use those re-runs. At $220,000 of income, the fully loaded configurations run from about 1.9 percent of income for a male internist to about 5 percent for a female surgeon, and the male $5,000 configurations land at roughly 0.9 to 1.8 percent, at or just under the bottom of the 1 to 3 percent of income that individual coverage typically costs.

The four specialty groups are the carriers' own class assignments from their mid-2026 producer guides, internal medicine standing in for internal medicine, family medicine, and hospitalists, surgical for general surgeons, psychiatry for psychiatrists, and the anesthesiology group for the class anesthesiology and emergency medicine share at each carrier. The first three groups were quoted with the full mental and nervous benefit period at every carrier. The anesthesiology group could not be, because two carriers' tools imposed the limitation they require for those specialties (24 months at one, 12 months per occurrence at the other in Texas), while the other three produced class rates without a limitation those carriers would impose on a real anesthesiology or emergency medicine file. A real quote at those three therefore sits roughly 10 percent below the printed figure on the male profile, and the female anesthesiology illustrations were run on the same election as the male ones at each carrier, so the same two-of-five split applies to the female range.

Three of the figures on this page are derived rather than read off an illustration. The female cost per extra $1,000 of benefit is each carrier's male slope multiplied by its own female-to-male ratio at $10,000, and those ratios ran 1.43 to 1.76 on the internal medicine and surgical classes and 1.39 to 1.76 across all four groups. The discount value is the 10 to 20 percent association, multi-life, or employer discount at the level our placements most commonly reach, printed as a rounded approximation on purpose. And the waiting-period percentages come from the one carrier whose illustrations price four waiting periods side by side. Everything else is itemized on the illustrations themselves, including the COLA, residual, and catastrophic premiums behind the rider chart, with the catastrophic rider set at the largest amount each carrier's software allows while keeping its no-cost benefit increase rider at the study income, the full $10,000 at two carriers and a scaled amount at three. The California and New York ranges count only the carriers selling the same product in that state.

Monthly premiums here are the carriers' monthly-pay rates, which at four of the five carry a charge for paying in installments and run a few percent above one-twelfth of the annual rate, so the annual figures in the first section are not twelve times the monthly ones.

None of this is a quote. The rates are filed rates that change, the applicant is hypothetical, and the underwriting that decides a physician's actual offer has not happened. We plan to re-run the study every six to twelve months. This page is educational, and the number that counts is on a current illustration with your name and specialty on it, run at all five carriers side by side, which is the comparison we do. Request a physician quote comparison and see where your specialty lands.